Children Know: This Curriculum is Devoid of Care

Bevan Holloway

So here it is.

A curriculum, loaded with fingers, pointing, telling us, Look!: now’s the time for this and this and this; but hurry because it’s almost time for that and that and that; and make sure you do it this way, not that way or that way.

A curriculum, designed to stop us looking at the moon.

A curriculum, designed to stop us from stopping to witness beauty.

A curriculum, that will mean we never know the real child.

Many, like Winston, that guzzler of Putin juice, would deride what I have just written as woke, but in saying it they would be encouraging lawlessness and delusion. Children have a legal right to be heard; only a fool mistakes the finger for the moon.

The Education and Training Act requires the Minister to make reasonable efforts to consult children and young people. She hasn’t.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states they have the right for the government to make decisions in their interest. Hard to do that when you don’t make an effort to include them in the process.

So, at UplifED we heard from students. With Dr Claire Achmad, our Children’s Commissioner as their guide, they told us things Stanford’s curriculum developers have seemingly never heard: the arts and outdoors matter; school should feel like family; teachers, it’s ok to be vulnerable; I am more than a grade; give us as many options as you can so we can find ourselves; everything is relationships, so care for us, see us; and teach us, don’t just tell us, guide us through, be there, and believe.

Why does this curriculum bear no relationship to their words? The students know. One said afterwards that this curriculum shows the system doesn’t care about them.

Of course it doesn’t. All those fingers, they’re pointing at a mirage of the moon.

You can’t care for something you’re not aware of.

How dare we not look.

Yet, we can, you know, and we should. It is the only ethical course.

Pasi Sahlberg’s keynote showed us what makes the difference, and he did it with data: foster student belonging and you get a 1 year acceleration of learning; focus on quality teacher-student relationships and you get a 2 year acceleration; create space for flourishing curiosity and you get a 3 year acceleration.

This curriculum Stanford has developed shrinks the possibilities for belonging, defines teacher-student relationships as a command-obey dynamic, and tries to fool us into believing that curiosity is earned.

It is a curriculum developed by fools happy to mistake a mirage for the moon.

It is a curriculum that will fail most of our kids, just as its versions around the world have.

It is #notourcurriculum because it does not see our kids.

Say no.